Game Tables as Art: Luxury Billiards, Pingpong, & Foosball

By S.A. Rogers

No matter how much you try to spruce them up, game tables always manage to look incredibly retro. The fuzzy green surfaces of pool tables are often comforting and nostalgic, and for many of us, the classic game room is more than enough to satisfy our personal recreation needs. Still, where does one turn when shopping for a game table to place among all the mid-century modern furniture in their $10 million estate?

The answer is Calma e Gesso, a new luxury design brand headed by Italian brothers Davide and Gabriele Adriano and American architect Gregg Brodarick. A quick glance through their catalog reveals a lot about the company. The brand offers a series of luxury lifestyle products, including a set of high-class game tables that would fit in with any modern décor. From the outset of the project, the designers knew they wanted to create a sleek alternative to the bulky design of conventional pool tables. The “Filotto” Pool Table is the culmination of their vision.

“The first challenge of Calma e Gesso has been in recreating a product with such a long history but so little evolution,” says the company. “The billiards, or pool table has always been a work of artisan carpentry, even up until the present day, but it is a design ‘frozen in time.’ Taking the strongest traditional elements from the table designs of established artisans and re-interpreting them with a series of innovative, patented solutions, Calma e Gesso has succeeded in recreating the familiar green wool suspended in an ethereal crystal structure.”

The Lungolinea table, which features a transparent glass surface and a minimalist mesh net, brings the same aesthetic considerations to ping-pong. Designed to meet professional specifications, Lungolinea offers all the functionality of a standard ping-pong table. The only difference is, the Calma e Gesso model looks a million times better.

Adriano Design, Calma e Gesso’s parent company, also offers a variety of foosball tables under the brand name TECKELL, including the “Contropiede.” “It was definitely challenging to completely bend the rules through a ‘game furniture item,’ turning a football table from a plain bar furnishing into a refined furniture piece which could feature heavily in a sitting room, and we were successful beyond imagination,” explain the designers. TECKELL also manufactures “Angolo” and “90 Degree Minuto” models, which sport polished wooden legs, and a smaller “Intervallo” model for children. The “Cristallino” is available in the company’s iconic crystal or in “Cristallino Gold,” complete with 24-karat-gold plated players for those who really feel like flaunting their wealth.

Sure, there’s something almost cartoonishly ostentatious about a gold-plated foosball table, and the Adriano brothers mince no words when discussing the “bourgeois” origins of game tables in the palaces of old. If, like most of us, you can only dream about ordering one of these sparkling crystal tables for your home, take comfort in the fact that Calma e Gesso’s innovative designs are sure to inspire some lower-priced (but still completely modern and minimalist) options in the near future.